Answers

Robert,

I purchased an R8 back in January and have been very happy with it's
handling, and the lenses. I currently have a 90mm 2.8 and a 28mm
2.8, both are contrasty and yield very nice chtomes. The viewfinder
on the R8 is superb, extremely bright. It is a very intuitive
camera, well placed controls and solid.

Macro Elmarit 60/2.8 is an excellent lens-- one of the best macro lens
I use it often as a standard lens instead of Summicron 50/2, great
for close up of flowers, butterflies and landscape.
Landscape master David Muench used Macro-Elmarit 60/2.8 for
many of his 35mm landscape pictures

Thanks for treasuring our insight - I am not sure it is worth that! If
you like EOS style metering then you need the R8 as the R6.2 and R7
have more conventional averaging and spot metering (the R8 has this as
well of course). The R7 is a good camera but does not have matrix
metering so if you like to leave the camera on auto it will not work
quite so well (in theory at least). The R8 gets a lot of knocks from
Leicaphiles - but it is a real thoroughbred in my opinion - just
bigger than most people have come to expect from a Leica.

For travel color chrome work I'd start with the 35-70/4 and 80-
200/4. I'd choose the 21/4 for wide-angle, as you don't need an
f/2.8 lens and the 21 is lighter than the 24 (and a lot
ligher/smaller than older 19) and less expensive than the current
19. I'd also pick up a 2x for rare occasions with the 80-200. You
would also be wise to get a 50/2 for use in low light situations,
it's not too expensive (for a Leica) and optically superb. I myself
carry the 35/1.4 in preference, but that's about 3x the price of the
50, used. Other very nice lenses for travel are the 28/2.8, 35/2.8
(last version E55) and 90/2.8 (last version E55). I'm not too keen
on the macro lenses for Leica R, as good as they are optically. They
don't go from infinity to 1:1 without accessories, and there's no TTL
ringlight available for the Leica R8. I use the Nikon 5T and 6T
achromats with a 60-62 stepping ring on the 35-70 which already has a
decent close-focus mode.
For bodies, the R8 is the only one with an evaluative metering
system. But I'd never own less than 3 R bodies. It's not that
they're that unreliable, just that Leica service is very slow. My
choice for a single backup would be an R6. Much cheaper than the 6.2
and lacks only the 1/2000 top speed. For a second all-round body, the
R7. BTW, if you stand an R7 and R8 next to one another, you'll
notice they are almost the same height and depth (the R8 looks
thicker because of the body contours and grip), the R8 is a couple cm
longer. It does weigh more, but it's not that noticeable. The R8's
size is mostly optical illusion. Put a motor-winder on both bodies,
the R7 is taller and heavier!

* more convenient mirror lock-up which will work with the camera's
self-timer.

As Jay has said, the difference in size and weight between the R7 and
R8 bodies is not really that great and I found that it was more than
offset by the extra comfort afforded by the R8's shape. In any case,
once you start attaching some of the heavier R lenses, the R8 seems
to provide a better balance.

As to the 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, I have found its performance to be
very good even at its maximum f/2.8 aperture, giving superbly sharp
images with high contrast and brilliant colors. The quality of out-of-
focus areas (bokeh) is first class and provides a smooth "creamy"
background. If you don't need the speeds of the faster 50mm
Summicron-R or Summilux-R lenses, the 60mm Macro can serve very well
as an all-round standard lens.